Meals play an important role in controlling your blood sugar levels. Your glucose levels are affected by the foods you eat. Some foods usually respond to your glucose levels, while others can set it off, resulting in a spike in your sugar or glucose levels. As a result, maintaining your blood sugar levels requires sticking to a healthy diet. A healthy diet can help you manage your glucose levels to a great extent. It must also include all of the important nutritional vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are beneficial to your overall health and blood sugar levels. An optimal diet provides all of the vitamins while avoiding sugar and refined carbohydrates.
Nutritionists recommend that you eat infrequently. Control your energy consumption as well to keep your blood sugar levels stable. Keeping track of your eating habits, on the other hand, can be difficult and overwhelming.
Those thousands of reports, taken together, tell a story about some of the worst foods for our metabolic health; foods that frequently caused a significant glucose response had the lowest overall Zone Scores.
Some of the foods on the list, such as donuts, will come as no surprise. However, you might not expect to see sushi—after all, fish is a protein that is unlikely to cause blood sugar spikes. The white rice beneath the fish, on the other hand, is a processed starch that can cause a glucose spike in many people. Another pleasant surprise? Grapes were included on the list. To be sure, whole fruit is preferable to processed food (or juice), but some fruits contain more sugar than others.
Six Unexpected Foods That Increased Blood Sugar Levels—and How to Make Them Healthier
Grapes Reason for Low Score
Many fruits are high in sugar and will cause blood sugar spikes (although whole fruit is always better than juice). Grapes contain 15g-20g of sugar per cup, and despite having a low glycemic index, many people find that they significantly raise glucose levels.
How to make it healthy: Eat fewer grapes, pair them with fat or protein, or substitute berries like strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries, which have about half the sugar.
Oats
Why It Probably Scored Low: Oatmeal, which is often considered a go-to healthy breakfast, surprises many Levels members as a glucose spiker. Heavily processed “instant” or rolled varieties break down faster, causing a sharp rise in blood sugar, and flavoured varieties frequently contain added sugars.
How to make it healthy: Replace your morning bowl with a healthy smoothie topped with hearty toppings like hemp seeds, almond butter, chopped nuts, and chia. If you absolutely must have oatmeal, choose steel-cut oats or groats and pair them with healthy fats and proteins like walnuts, almond butter, and chia seeds. We also enjoy replacing oatmeal with grain-free granola or warm chia pudding.
Sushi
Reasons It Probably Received a Low Score: Sticky white rice has a high starch content and is refined. Soy sauce is frequently sweetened.
How to make it healthy: Order sashimi without rice and avoid drowning it in soy sauce to make it healthier. Try cauliflower rice sushi, which is becoming more popular in restaurants and is simple to prepare.
Acai Bowl
Why It Probably Scored Low: Acai berries are low in sugar (just 2g or 3g per 100g) and high in antioxidants, but they have a slightly bitter taste, so commercial bowls tend to mix in sweeter fruits like bananas or mangos, sweeteners like honey, or sweetened nut milks, which raises the sugar level. Blended bowls are even worse because they remove some of the fibre that helps slow glucose absorption.
How it makes it healthier: by making your own at home or ordering off-menu. Reduce the sweeteners, mix in unsweetened milk, and top with low-sugar fruits like berries, lemon juice, or coconut. Even better, include vegetables like spinach as well as healthy fats like chia or flax seeds.
Ramen and Pho
Despite the fact that these are two distinct foods, the spike is most likely due to the same source: noodles. (It’s worth noting that we also see food logs for broad cuisines like Thai and Chinese food, but the glucose offender is a specific ingredient like white rice or a sweet sauce.) There are numerous healthy Thai and Chinese menu options available.) Noodles (including rice noodles) are a refined grain-based processed food that causes many people to spike.
How to make it healthy: Look for dishes without noodles, or if you’re cooking at home, substitute konjac root or vegetable pasta. Vegan options with spinach noodles, zucchini noodles, or tofu noodles are now available at many pho and ramen restaurants. Also, stay away from any sugary sauces or glazes.
Cereal
Even “healthy” brands (we’re looking at you, Cheerios) have sugar listed as one of the first ingredients. Beware of phrases like “whole grain”—cereals are processed foods that will most likely raise blood sugar levels.
How to make it healthier: Keto-friendly cereals, such as Magic Spoon, use alternative sweeteners and may help some people lower their glucose response. Better yet, make your grain-free granola or purchase some from a store (we have tried this brand mixed with unsweetened cashew milk and have had minimal spike).
Mangoes are high in natural sugars, and if consumed in large quantities, they will affect your blood sugar levels. When eaten sparingly, this fruit will not cause an increase in your glucose or blood sugar levels. Nonetheless, CGM has shown a spike in glucose levels after eating mangoes as pudding or with milk. Milk, pudding, and mango are all foods that raise your glycemic index. As a result, eating more mango than recommended or in another form, such as pudding, can cause a spike in your glucose levels.
How to make it healthier: Fruit juices are similar in that they are already in the most soluble form. Our bodies don’t take a long time to digest and absorb it; after consuming the fruit juices, we noticed that blood glucose levels shot up instantly. It is preferable to consume whole fruits rather than fruit juices.
Conclusion
Finally, it is critical that you do not include or eliminate any food items from your diet before consulting a dietician. Every bite you take has an immediate impact on your glucose levels and metabolic health; as a result, making informed decisions and avoiding foods that may spike your blood sugar levels is critical to keeping your overall health in check. Consuming properly keeps you healthy and keeps diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and autoimmune disease at bay. Furthermore, when backed up by relevant data, your consuming habits will be simpler.
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